The sixth edition of the Printemps des Laboratoires, entitled Endetter et punir (‘Get them into debt and punish them’), runs from October 2017 to September 2018.

Far from focusing solely on the economic dimension, which is the focus of many political debates today, we would point out, on the one hand, that economic considerations are inseparable from political ideas and that debt, beyond the question of money, impacts our behaviour and the very essence of our being, inevitably entailing deprivations of freedom. Put another way, it is a mechanism of power that controls and shapes our patterns of life. If debt is an intrinsic part of our existence, both social and individual – we are born into debt and we extend this debt to future generations –, we must become aware of how we can construct new, non-oppressive human subjectivities.

Against "infinite debt", which is one of the characteristics of modernity and assimilated as an inescapable destiny, against the economy and morals of debt, which are rooted in guilt and fear, we explore strategies of resistance and struggle, which can offer ways of escape, new ways of being together, other mechanisms of attention, anything that can help to decolonise our thoughts, decapitalise and depatriarchalize the structures of our society.

To this end, all through the year we are calling on artists, historians, economists, researchers and activists to take part in a number of public events leading up to the Printemps des Laboratoires Weekend, the sixth and final edition of which will take place on Saturday 15 and Sunday 16 September 2018.

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Le Printemps des Laboratoires is supported by the Adagp and Copie privé.